near catastrophic chain of mistakes......

james3370

james3370

Premium Member
i forgot to turn the lil clip-on fan that blows on the water when the halide is on, so the excess heat caused the tank to have an unusually high amount of evaporation yesterday afternoon....

well i grabbed the wrong container & ended up topping it off w/ saltwater instead of fresh.....almost 1/2 a gallon

salinity in the tank jumped to 1.030 :eek1:

i lost my phillipine tang yesterday & this morn, my adorable lil pygmy angel was a gonner :mad:

i have been draining out 1 quart of tank water every 4 hours & replacing it w/ freshwater & so far, the clowns seem to be doing ok, so does the red star, coral banded shrimp, & all the cleanup crew.

timer just cut the light off for the eve, so i think i'm gonna leave it be for the rest of the eve so as to not stress them out too bad.....salinity is down to 1.025 now. i'll give it a few hrs tomorrow after the light comes back on & restart taking out a quart every 4 hrs till i get it down where it should be

i did a quick test on other paramaters & it all checks good....ph was a tad low, but i don't think i'm gonna buffer it till i get the salinity in the acceptable range.

been doing saltwater for about a year & this is the first time i have done something so brazingly STUPID. just one of the "cons" of a small tank...... :mad2:
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13786945#post13786945 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ocd_mariner
What size tank was this?
Click to expand...

12 gallon nano (realistically about 8 gallons of actual water volume)......so 1/2 gallon is a HUGE amount relatively speaking
 
1.025 salinity is right where you want it, where were you going to take it down to?

Sorry for the luck, I hate things like that.
 
How long did you have the tang, angel and two clowns in the tank for? For 8 gallons of water volume, thats a lot of fish. I would think that would be the killer rather then a jump in salinity.
 
the tang was in there for a few weeks....it was eating the algae problem i was experiencing.

the pygmy has been in there w/ the clowns for a month or 2 & was moved in from another tank cause it wasn't getting along w/ a fish in that tank. all the fish as still pretty small

the clowns & pygmy always seemed very content in the tank & the paramaters usually seemed fine, but might have very well caused the algae problem coupled w/ the long light schedule. i had dialed the lighting back & started getting the algae problem under control, but added the tang under advice from chris at the critter who knew the setup & said it would be ok till i got the algae problem under control better. i was also planning on moving everything up to a larger tank soon, so figured it'd be fine for a short-term thing....then i went & catostropically took the salinity thru the roof

i just miss the pygmy....he was kewl :( anytime i came near the tank, he'd come out & come right to the front & kinda do a lil swim dance :)

as far as salinity....i was shooting for 1.023
 
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well...if you decide to do that reeftopia buy in december ..the pygmy angel is only $15....i miss the little guy i had too, so i would join ya in another group buy (they didnt have any in stock when i did it)
 
it's sitting at 1.024 w/ the lights off. i'll check it again after the halide has been on for a few hours

everybody else seems to be doing ok.....even the red sea star is pretty active, so that's always a good sign seeing how they are so prone to tank paramater changes
 
I once did a water change on my 270 with freshwater... about 20 gallons was in the sump before I noticed that the return was causing that pretty little shimmer effect you get when you mix fresh and salt water.

Luckily a lot of the fresh water was still in the sump so I drained it and it only knocked down the display to like 31ppt from 35, but had it been a smaller tank or had I been filling straight to the display without paying attention, it could have been fairly catastrophic.

So, you're not the first bonehead :) Sorry to hear about the losses though.
 
in the original thread i had said <b>salinity in the tank jumped to 1.030</b> :eek1: but what i had meant was specific gravity had jumped to 1.030....which would equate to salinity of 40ppt :mad2:

update: after small removals of tank water (1 quart every 4-6hrs) & replacing w/ ro/di water, things have come back to where they should be :)

specific gravity is at 1.022-1.023 / salinity of 30ppt
ph is a tad low, so i added 1 suggested-sized dose of seachem reef buffer
all other parameters test as they should
clowns are eating like the NEVER get fed LOL....coral banded shrimp seems fine & so do all the snails & hermits....red star is all over the place.....torch coral has come out noticibly as has the pulsating xenia

yes, even the green algae on the glass & sandbed that i was battling has returned a bit, but that's ok.....i dont mind scraping the glass :)

i appologize profusely to the clowns everytime i stop by the tank & promise them i'll try not to be such a bonehead in the future LOL
 
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